Carl Zuckmayer

Twenty years ago, Barbara Blomberg was the mistress of Karl V. in Regensburg and became the mother of his son Don Juan d’Austria; now she is married and run down in Brussels with a boozy, small major, but determined to rise into the life at court at all costs. Her illegitimate son is a world famous admiral already. Without scruples and with diplomatic finesse, she manages to be recognised as an indirect member of the royal family and to be allotted a castle near Brussels. For her son’s sake and his position as viceregent of the Netherlands, and also to save her lover Ratcliff, she renounces the privilege in the end and enters a solitary life in Castilia. The Spanish poet Cervantes speaks the epilogue of this striking plays of roles and intrigues: a declaration of the belief in the fullness of being, in the “heart and womb and smile of a woman”.